The World Series of Poker has started up again, and we are quickly approaching the Main Event. Many players will participate in the WSOP Main Event this year, but few will leave with more money than they came with. The question is, what separates the winners from the losers? In poker, it’s tough to pinpoint any one factor, but here are some tips to help give you the best chance to win a big live tournament.

Poker Training has become a big business since the first time we made a list of the top sites in 2009. Every year when we update this list, we find that new training sites have popped up online, and others have gone away. Once again in 2015, we have taken the time to review all these sites, and compile a comprehensive list of sites that offer the best training materials for your buck.

We would like to emphasize that these are the honest opinions of the TestYourPoker.com team on these sites. The list is not necessarily in order, as different sites have different strengths.

The following list is comprised of the casinos / cardrooms with the best live poker tournaments in the U.S., either based on high payouts or frequency of tournaments. We don’t have any affiliation with any of these places, we just like playing at them. We tried to include a wide variety of destinations, so as not to limit you to one place. So, what are you waiting for – pack your bags and head to the some of the best poker rooms in the USA! We have provided links to the tournament page, when possible, for each of these casinos.

Most serious poker players read blogs at one time or another. It’s hard to avoid them if you spend any significant amount of time online reading about poker. But some blogs are definitely better than others. All of the blogs listed in this article are active and have high quality posts.
It’s important to note that we are not affiliated with any of these blogs, and these rankings are just based on the opinions of our team here at www.testyourpoker.com. There are plenty of blogs that we read, but these are the ones that really stood out to us. If you have a personal favorite that we’ve missed, feel free to comment about it.

No one would ever consider running a business without a strategy. Well, some people do it, but they probably aren’t in business very long. The same can be said for poker. Many people decide to play poker without any strategy for getting better, but they probably lose their money rather quickly. To take this a step farther, many people embark on a poker training agenda with the intent of improving, but very few approach their poker training with any strategy. I believe that this is a critical mistake.

The first step in devising an appropriate poker training plan is doing a Big-Picture Analysis of your long-term goals and the steps that it will take to reach them. The bigger your goal, the more time it will take. The farther along you are to accomplishing your goal, the less time it will take. The program I am going to suggest today is directed primarily at beginning and intermediate poker players, but many aspects of it are useful for advanced players also.

Let’s face it, we could read poker forums all day. There are so many of them now, but some are definitely better than others. All of the forums listed in this article are active and have high quality posts and advice. Our recommendation for poker improvement would be to join one or two of these forums and become an active member. You will gain much more as an active poster than as a constant lurker.

Bovada is the leading online poker room for U.S. players, and it is also the only site with 100% anonymous poker. Over the past several years it has grown to become the most trusted site in terms of reliable payments to U.S. players. So what is anonymous poker and how can you use it to your advantage?

I made the 5-hour drive down to Hollywood, FL this week, for the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open. With over $12,500,000 in guaranteed prizes, this was a series not to be missed. Nothing like this has ever come to Florida before, and I must say, it was one of the most well-run tournaments I’ve been to. Although the crowds were large, I rarely waited in line to buy in, the tournaments started on time, and the dealers and floormen were outstanding. Which believe me, isn’t always the case – some of you may remember me being critical of a series at Foxwoods once, with long lines, delays, and not-so-knowledgeable floors.

As the battles for online poker continue on, there are some that have been won and some that have been lost. Currently 4 states have active online poker bills: California, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Texas.

However, this isn’t to say online poker is legal in these states yet, in fact Texas may never see online poker again. It seems the bills never get going, and end up stalling in committee.

We have decided to donate 100% of our monthly poker training membership revenues for all new memberships during the month of July, 2010, to victims of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. We will make the donation to Second Harvest Food Bank. We feel like this is the socially responsible thing for us to do. Many of our friends and family members live on the gulf coast, and they are going to face hardships for many years as a result of this accident. We believe our members will be glad to know that we are helping out a good cause, and it is a good opportunity for poker players to help out and get use of a valuable poker training service that many online poker players pay for anyway. We believe that we will be able to make a substantial contribution to a worthy cause, and help out our neighbors on the gulf coast.